However, a new article in PLoS Genetics, “The Hourglass and the Early Conservation Models — Co-Existing Patterns of Developmental Constraints in Vertebrates,” shows that even an analysis of the genome based on Darwinian assumptions fails to confirm many predictions of the “phylotypic” stage. The implication is that, as other papers have more explicitly suggested, the phylotypic stage may not clearly exist.

This is not true. The original model makes no predictions on gene age or gene sequence evolutionary rate. So I’d rather say that they are closer to the original model than the reports which they fail to confirm.